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BOOK REVIEW: Detective Story by Imre Kertész

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Detective StoryDetective Story by Imre Kertész

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Hungarians have won their fair share of Nobel Prizes–more than most for a country of Hungary’s size. However, these awards are overwhelmingly in the hard sciences, and so you’ll be forgiven for not being familiar with the country’s sole Nobel Prize winner in Literature to date. If you’ve read Imre Kertész, you probably read Fateless (Sorstalanság.) Fateless (aka Fatelessness) is his semi-autobiographical novel about a boy in Auschwitz.

Detective Story is a short novel (some might call it a novella) whose protagonist is a rookie torturer for the secret police of an unnamed Latin American dictatorship. As the novel begins, we find that the protagonist, Antonio Martens, is on death row. The novel is written as his death row journal of how he came to be in this predicament. It tells how Martens came to have his despicable job, but mostly it describes the one case that was his undoing. That case involved the arrest of the son(Enrique Salinas)of a powerful, wealthy, and well-connected merchant, and the subsequent arrest of the merchant himself (Federigo Salinas.)

Being a Holocaust survivor, Kertész is intimately acquainted with the mixed bag that resides within all of us. It’s hard to imagine a more detestable person than one who would torture confessions out of people who are either political dissenters or who are altogether innocent. Kertész subverts our expectations by showing us a perfectly ordinary and likable chap who has a distaste for his work, but thinks that he is defending his country. As they say, Hitler was probably a likable enough fellow in his own mind. So we see Martens’ rationalizations that allow him to do what he does. We also see how he is trapped by the system. He wants to be reasonable, but, once inside, the system won’t let him be.

This theme of being trapped is not applied to the main character alone. The idea that underlies the entire story-line is that an authoritarian regime’s secret police has one shot to get it right, and that’s before the arrest is made. Once they made the arrest, the men involved (the protagonist’s boss and his boss’s boss)felt compelled to move in one direction, even once they realized that they were wrong and that each additional step was only digging their grave deeper. At one point Martens’ boss’s boss, the Colonel, asks what they should do, and the rookie interrogator unwisely suggests that they should let both the father and son go–even given their tortured appearance. However, a dictatorship is built on a fiction of infallibility, and to admit being mistaken is to become vulnerable.It’s like Machiavelli’s advice to the prince that while it would be nice to be both loved and feared, if one has to make a choice, it’s safer to be feared.

There is another character into which we gain insight, and that is Enrique Salinas. Most of this insight comes from excerpts of Enrique’s journal that Martens presents us. We see that Enrique is badly depressed and is questioning whether there is even a point to living. We find out from the interrogation of Federigo that Enrique’s “suspicious activities” are really just wild-goose chases designed to satiate Enrique’s need for adventure and purpose in a safe manner. We also find out that Enrique longs for the authorities to put him to death–suicide by authoritarian regime, if you will. So the idea that the secret police will be punishing the young heir by putting him to death is just another way in which expectations are turned on their head in this novel.

If you only read one book by Imre Kertész, perhaps it should be Fateless, but I’ll contend you have room for this short work as well.

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CLASSIC WORKS: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

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Slaughterhouse-FiveSlaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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If you’re like me, you had to read this in high school. I reread it as an adult because the first time its awesomeness was tarnished by the fact that it was mandatory. Being a pessimistic youth, my thought was, “How good could it be if they are making me read it?” They don’t make you read Batman; they make you read Moby Dick. I’m glad I reread it as an adult. Little did I realize, my knee-jerk rejection of the book as something forced upon me, beyond my control, was mirrored by the theme of the book.

Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, an optometrist who survived the Dresden fire-bombings was abducted by an alien race and became “unstuck in time.” If you didn’t get this impression, the book is strange. As the term “unstuck in time” suggests, there isn’t a chronological sequencing of events. Instead, the story leaps around from Pilgrim’s adult life as an optometrist to his time as a young soldier in the military to his time as an exhibit in a Tralfamadorian Zoo.

While the novel covers a lot of life, many of the important themes are seen in protagonist’s war experience. It should be noted that there is an autobiographical component to this book. Vonnegut was a prisoner of war who was ordered to help dig for survivors in the wake of the fire-bombing of Dresden. This gave Vonnegut a unique perspective of war and how similarly it is experienced by the enemy. An important line of tension in the book is between Pilgrim’s character and that of the jingoistic Roland Weary.

The Tralfamadorian subplot has a lot to do with being out of control, and learning that perceptions of control are illusory. This is exemplified by the time jumps, which leave Pilgrim completely unable to predict what will happen next. Then there is Pilgrim’s experience being exhibited in an alien zoo, what  could be less in control than that.

Like most of Vonnegut’s work, Slaughterhouse-Five is a dark comedy. There is humor throughout, but humor wrapped in the macabre. For example, whenever anyone dies there is a chorus of “So it goes.”

Everyone should read this, and reread it if necessary.

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MASTER WORKS: Apology by Plato

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ApologyApology by Plato

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Apology is Plato’s account of the trial of Socrates. This brief work presents Socrates’ defense of himself as well as his reaction to the death sentence verdict against him. Of course, it is all through the lens of Plato, as Socrates left us no written works.

Socrates was charged with impiety and corruption of the youth. He acknowledged both that he was eloquent and that he was a gadfly of Athens (the latter being a role for which Socrates believes he should be valued.) However, he denied both of the formal charges.

Socrates refuted the charge of corrupting the youth first by denying that he had taken money in exchange for teaching. Taking money was a component of this charge. Socrates’ claim is supported later when Socrates tells the court that he can only afford a very small fine, even in the face of the alternative–a death sentence.

Socrates says that he sees nothing wrong with taking money for teaching–if one has wisdom to share. Socrates says that he has no such wisdom, and suggests the philosopher/teachers that are taking money aren’t in error for taking money, but rather because they really don’t have wisdom themselves.

This is summed up nicely by this pair of sentences, “Well, although I do not suppose either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is–for he knows nothing and thinks he knows. I neither know nor think I know.”

While Socrates raised the ire of the Athenian leaders with what they no doubt believed to be his arrogance, in fact it wasn’t that he thought himself wiser than they, but that he thought they were deluded in thinking themselves wise.

Socrates’ lesson remains valid today. It is the scourge of all ages to think that have finally attained true understanding of the world. Our posterity may know more, but we know all of the essentials and are rapidly converging on a complete picture of our world. We think our generation to be humanity’s sage elders, when, in fact, we are the impetuous teen whose growth spurt has made him cocky. I would propose to you that in all likelihood, even today, the sets of “that which is true” and “that which humanity ‘knows'” form a classic interlinking Venn Diagram. That is, some of the body of knowledge that we take to be proven true is, in fact, false. This occurs because we cannot accept that there are things we are not yet prepared to know, so we use sloppy methodology to “prove” or “disprove.” This one reason we have all these conflicting reports. E.g. coffee is good for you one week, and carcinogenic the next.

VennDiagram_WhatWeKnow

Socrates uses the method that today bears his name, i.e. the Socratic method, to challenge the arguments of Meletus, the prosecutor. The Socratic method uses questions as a device to lead the opposition to a conclusion based on premises they themselves state in the form of their answers. Socrates proposes that if it is he alone who is intentionally corrupting the youth, they would not come around–for no one prefers to be subjected to evil rather than good.

Socrates denies the suggestion that he does not believe in the gods, and in fact indicates that the very suggestion by virtue of the charges against him is a contradiction. What Socrates is guilty of is encouraging those who come around him to develop their own thoughts on god, and not to subordinate their thought to anyone–an idea the leaders found disconcerting.

Socrates goes on to say why he is unmoved by the death sentence. He wonders why it is thought he should beg and wail, when he doesn’t know for sure that an evil is being done against him.

The moral of the story is that those in power fear and will attempt to destroy advocates of free thinking.

This book should be read in conjunction with a couple other Platonic Dialogues, Crito and Phaedo.

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MASTER WORKS: The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

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The Taming of the ShrewThe Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This is one of Shakespeare’s most controversial works, and debates still rage about whether its misogyny was written tongue-in-cheek, was a product of the times, or was indicative of a dark side of The Bard.

The plot revolves around two sisters, Katharina and Bianca, and their suitors. The younger sister, Bianca, is a catch and has many suitors vying for her affection. However, Katharina is, in the terms of Shakespeare’s day, shrewish. She is out-spoken, strong-willed, and on occasion downright bitchy; characteristics that weren’t particularly marriageable back in the day.

The father of the two girls will not allow Bianca to be wed until Katharina, his elder daughter, is also engaged. However, no man is willing to take that bullet so that one of his buddies can marry the much beloved Bianca. That is until Petruchio enters the scene with his friend Lucentio. Petruchio could use the lucrative dowry and believes himself equal to the task of taming the shrewish Katharina. Petruchio’s decision makes Lucentio (not to mention Gremio and Hortensio, i.e. the other suitors) extremely happy.

Petruchio’s approach to taming is to be hyper-sensitive to Katharina’s complaints. She gets no food to avoid her inevitable gripes about the food’s quality. Since no gown would be good enough, she gets no new clothes. These actions are designed to train Katharina to bide her tongue.

Like all Shakespeare, the language is phenomenal.

Like all Shakespeare, everyone should read this work.

I’m curious about people’s feelings regarding this play.

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BOOK REVIEW: A Dead Hand by Paul Theroux

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A Dead Hand: A Crime in CalcuttaA Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta by Paul Theroux

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

A Dead Hand opens with the protagonist, Jerry Delfont, receiving an unexpected and unusual letter. Delfont is a traveling writer who is temporarily in Calcutta. The letter is from an American businesswoman and philanthropist who seems to have gone native in India. The woman, Merrill “Ma” Unger, asks Delfont to investigate a mysterious event involving her son’s boyfriend, a young Indian man named Rajat.

Rajat claims to have woken up one night in his cheap hotel room to find the dead body of a boy on the floor. Rajat panicked and left, and is living in fear that he will be picked by the police.

The book in part traces Delfont’s investigation of this mysterious body, and in part describes his burgeoning relationship with “Ma” Unger. The former is slow going through the first 2/3 of the book, and at some points one wonders if Delfont has forgotten about the investigation altogether.

The title has a dual meaning. It describes both the writer’s block Delfont is suffering at the beginning of the book and the actual physical hand that turns up as the sole remaining trace of the dead boy who turns out really was in Rajat’s room.

Coming from famed traveling writer Paul Theroux, it’s no surprise that the development of setting is phenomenal. Theroux not only gives one a sense of the sights, sounds, and scents of Calcutta, he also gives the reader insight into the human dimension of India through a number of supporting characters. There is a passionate young woman who writes poetry and practices the Indian martial art of Kalaripayattu. She is a strong, bright, and independent woman but is stuck in a world of arranged marriages and sexual repression. Despite the official end of the caste system, we see completely subservient Indians as well as others who think they are beyond talking to a lowly writer.

The plotting is solid. It’s neither exceptional nor so flat or formulaic as to be boring. I, who am not particularly good at foreseeing plot twists, did anticipate the ending–at least in broad brush stroke terms. However, the book kept me interested and reading. There was a clear narrative arc and the main character definitely undergoes a change over the course of the book (more on that below.)

In my opinion, the book’s weakness is in character development, and specifically Delfont’s character. We are introduced to a Delfont who is having a tough time, but is essentially a likable guy with his head on straight. However, as he begins to fall for “Ma” Unger, he seems increasingly pathetic. Specifically, he falls into this weird relationship in which he seems to see her both sexually and maternally, and–like a schoolboy with a crush–he wants to do anything he can to please her and to gain her attention. Now, being pathetic is a little like being crazy. If the character knows or suspects they are crazy, then how crazy can they really be? Because Delfont recognizes he’s being pathetic, he remains a sympathetic character. However, I think Theroux over hammers the degree to which Delfont is smitten until we begin to think he is obsessed. The problem is that it makes his transformation and that of his relationship with “Ma”, which happens like the flip of a switch, less credible.

All and all, I would recommend this book. I think it’s particularly interesting for one who wants greater insight into India and, specifically, Calcutta.

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WRITING DEVICES: The Author Cameo in A Dead Hand

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I’ll soon finish reading a novel by Paul Theroux called A Dead Hand. I won’t get into the details of the book in this post because I’ll do a review later, but there’s a writing device in it that really intrigued me. Theroux inserts himself into the novel in a cameo role as a competitor to the protagonist. That is to say, the main character is a traveling writer who writes mostly magazine articles, while Theroux a prolific writer famous for travelogues such as The Great Railway Bazaar and Ghost Train to the Eastern Star,  as well as for many novels which are written with a travel writer’s sensibility for location. (A Dead Hand takes place in and around Calcutta, India.)

I enjoyed the author cameo. It would only work well for a writer like Theroux, one who is both well-known and, because of his nonfiction work, who readers have a feel for as a person. Still, I couldn’t think of another novel I’ve read in which this has been done. I’ve only read Theroux’s nonfiction so far, so maybe this is a running gag with him.

Inserting himself offers some opportunity for adding humor. For example, there’s a part in which the main character’s friend, who is also a go-between who introduces the two writers, says, “He [Theroux] said he wanted to take the train from Battambang to Phnom Penh.”

To which the main character replies, “He would. The bus is quicker!”

This technique also gives one the impression that we are getting some inside insight into the writer. When the main character mistrusts the author, how are we to process that?

Granted it’s a little like an actor looking into the camera and talking straight to the audience.

I’m interested to hear if this is a more widespread technique than I’m aware of? Who else does this?

BOOK REVIEW: 101 Great American Poems ed. The American Poetry and Literacy Project

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101 Great American Poems101 Great American Poems by The American Poetry and Literacy Project

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This is a collection of 101 poems by 39 different American poets. It begins with a poem by Anne Bradstreet in the 17th century and proceeds through to a work by W.H. Auden of the 20th century. In between are many poets that one would expect, such as Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Sandburg, and Cummings. There are others that might be unexpected such as Abraham Lincoln, Herman Melville, and Stephen Crane. While the poems aren’t all jingoistic in nature, there is a recurring theme of celebration of America.

Most of the poems in this tiny anthology will be familiar to poetry readers. This is a $1 Kindle e-book of a Dover Thrift Edition, and so one won’t find living poets represented, or poems that tap into the zeitgeist du jour— at the risk of mixing loan words. However, most of these poems deserve to be read and reread.

A few of my favorites are below with title, author, and a fragment.

The Builders by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman
O Captain! my captain! our fearful trip is done,
the ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

I’m nobody! Who are you? by Emily Dickenson
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us–don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus
“Give my your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,…

Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone

War is Kind by Stephen Crane
Do no weep, maiden, for war is kind

Sence You Wend Away by James Weldon Johnson
Seems lak to me de stars don’t shine so bright,

Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;

Fire and Ice by Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Chicago by Carl Sandburg
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

Fog by Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird;

The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

The Love Songs of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

First Fig by Edna St. Vincent Millay
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends–
it gives a lovely light.

Ars Poetica by Archibald Macleish
A poem should not mean
But be

I, Too by Langston Hughes
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,

Little Old Letter by Langston Hughes
You don’t need no gun nor knife–
A little old letter
Can take a person’s life.

Nothing struck me as conspicuously absent from this collection, but I’d be curious what poems people feel should (or shouldn’t) be in such a collection.

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BOOK REVIEW: Classic Haiku ed. by Yuzuru Miura

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Classic Haiku: A Master's SelectionClassic Haiku: A Master’s Selection by Yuzuru Miura

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Classic Haiku is a collection of 106 poems by masters such as Matsuo Bashō, Kobayashi Issa, and Yosa Buson. It’s logically arranged into five sections: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, and New Year’s Day. While haiku has come to be thought of as any poem in a 5-7-5 syllable arrangement, those familiar with traditional haiku know that there are other requirements that are at least as fundamental as the syllabic arrangement. One of these is that the poem be pure observation devoid of exposition. Another criteria is that it be rooted in nature. A final criteria, historically, has been that the poem indicate the season, if not giving an explicit seasonal word or phrase. This makes the season an optimal organizational unit for the book.

One nice feature of this book is that it includes the English translation, the Japanese romaji version (i.e. the way it would be spoken in Japanese but using roman alphabet characters), and the version using the Japanese system of writing. Granted, for those who aren’t fluent in Japanese, these features might not seem to add much. However, sound can be evocative itself in poetry, and so it can be interesting to read the Japanese for that reason. Furthermore, there are those who argue that 5-7-5 syllables is not the closest facsimile to Japanese haiku for haiku written in English. Because of the average length of syllables, some say that a 2-3-2 accented syllable pattern for English haiku is closer to the original Japanese form. Reading the Japanese, gives one an idea of the sound characteristics of Japanese haiku.

[Furthermore, if one loves a haiku enough to want to get it tattooed in Japanese on one’s body, one can double-check the characters before one gets it done at a Chinatown tattoo parlor only to find that what one really has tattooed on one’s butt is, “Syphilitic nightmare – Ketchup bottle mayhem day – Rides the goat to school”]

Here’s a sampling my favorites:

 

the raftsman’s straw cape
brocaded with
the storm-strewn cherry blossoms
– Yosa Buson

calm and serene
the sound of cicada
penetrates the rock
– Matsuo Bashō

in summer grasses
are now buried
glorious dreams of ancient warriors
– Matsuo Bashō

oh, cricket
act as grave keeper
after I’m gone
– Kobayashi Issa

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BOOK REVIEW: Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

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SolarisSolaris by Stanisław Lem

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Solaris is the  best known work of the Polish sci-fi writer Stanislaw Lem. It’s the story of the planet Solaris’s super-intelligent ocean and the humans that are observing it from an orbiting space station. Scientists discover that the ocean is intelligent because the planet orbits two stars, and the ocean must redistribute itself as ballast to keep Solaris from flying off out of its star systems.

Having had no luck in learning about this ocean, the scientists begin more invasive operations–bombarding the ocean with electromagnetic radiation. The ocean then begins to project human beings into the space station, using blueprints in the minds of the scientists. Each of the scientists begins to see, and eventually interact with, someone from his past. Each “guest” is physically indistinguishable from the person in the respective scientist’s past, but the simulacra are “off.”  These simulacra stir up bad memories.

The most extensive interaction we see between a crew member and one of these manifestations is that of the protagonist, Dr. Kris Kelvin, and his ex-wife. Dr. Kelvin is a psychologist and is the most recent crew edition. (The novel actually starts with him as a new arrival, we learn of the earlier incidents as he does.) His “visitor” is the spitting image of his wife, a woman who committed suicide after the couple broke up.

The novel plays with an intriguing question. What if a person you loved and lost came back from the dead, but you would only be able to experience them as they existed in your mind? In some sense, they’d be more real to you than the actual person. But you’d know they were just a fabrication, and you could never learn anything new about them. At first Kelvin rejects, even banishes, his wife’s doppelgänger, but when she inexplicably returns he finds it hard to maintain his distance.

I enjoyed this book. The translation seemed skilled to me (though I don’t read Polish, and hence didn’t read the original.) I’d recommend it.

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There have been three film adaptations of this novel. I haven’t seen any of the movies, but this is the trailer for the most recent one. The trailer emphasizes the love relationship more and the sentient ocean less than the novel (though the interaction of the protagonist with his imagined wife is central to the work.)

BOOK REVIEW: Steel and Other Stories by Richard Matheson

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Steel: And Other StoriesSteel: And Other Stories by Richard Matheson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

Steel and Other Stories is a collection of 15 short stories from the author of I am Legend. Thirteen of the fifteen stories are from the 50’s, and motifs of that time are common (e.g. Cold War phobia, the Western, etc.)

1.)The title story, Steel, is about android boxers. Viewers of the movie Real Steel, which was loosely based on this story, will find the story not much like the film. In the film the boxers are robots, but in the story they are androids. For those readers who aren’t sci-fi geeks, the difference is that androids look and move like humans. There is more on the line in the final fight in the story than in the film.

2.) Fit the Crime is about a cantankerous old poet on his deathbed. It’s a humorous story and will be enjoyed by those who love language play.

3.) The Wedding is about a superstitious groom who gets on his bride’s last nerve.

4.) The Conqueror is the sole Western in the collection. It features gunfights and a final line revelation.

5.) Dear Diary is a very short sci-fi piece that is written in the form of three diary entries: one in 1954, one in 3954, and one at an undesignated date presumed to be later than the second entry. In typical Mathesonian style, the third entry, only a partial sentence, turns expectations on end.

6.) In Descent two couples are preparing to move underground to survive nuclear holocaust. Confronted with the decision of dying above ground or living a subterranean life, one of the men opts for the former. This creates a dilemma for the man’s wife.

7.) In The Doll That Does Everything two parents of a horrid child contemplate whether the lifelike doll they buy their child really can do everything.

8.) The Traveler is about scholars who go back in time, cloaked, to observe biblical history first hand.

9.) When Day is Dun is about the last man alive, but, unlike I am Legend, the apocalypse is of nuclear annihilation.

10.) Splendid Source is one of the most famous stories in the collection. It’s about a search for the point of origin of ribald jokes. Viewers of Family Guy will recognize its depiction in an episode of that series.

11.) Lemmings is one of the shortest pieces in the collection. It imagines humanity walking one after another into the sea.

12.) In The Edge a man finds that people he doesn’t know know him. This begs the question of whether he has a doppelgänger or he’s lost his mind.

13.) In A Visit to Santa Claus a man reconsiders a contract on his wife’s life that is to be executed on a visit to the mall to see Santa.

14.) In Dr. Morton’s Folly a dentist gets an after-hours emergency case.

15.) In The Window of Time A man travels back in time 68 years by mysterious circumstance, walking familiar territory in transformed in time.

Matheson is a master story craftsman, and this collection is an interesting mix of stories from various genres–some humorous and some dark.

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